This invention relates to ball bearing testing and, more particularly, to acoustic detection of fracture of ball bearings.
Ball bearings are commonly used in rotating components, such as servomotors, bicycles, rotors, gas turbine engines and the like. The ball bearings may be manufactured from any of a variety of different materials, such as ceramic or metal alloy, depending upon the desired characteristics of the ball bearings. Manufacturing of the ball bearings is typically tightly controlled to achieve desired ball bearing characteristics. For example, a material composition of the ball bearings and processing steps for forming the ball bearings may be controlled to achieve the desired characteristics. If the composition deviates from the nominal composition or if the parameters of the processing steps deviate from predetermined tolerances, the ball bearing characteristics may be outside of a desirable range.
Typically, after manufacturing, one or more representative sample ball bearings are selected from a group of ball bearings for testing to determine if the composition or the process parameters have deviated. For example, a change in the composition or a change in a processing parameter may change the fracture strength of the ball bearing. One conventional method of determining whether the composition or processing has deviated is to measure the fracture strength by compressing the ball bearing between two platens in a load testing machine until the ball bearing fractures. The fracture strength may then be compared with a predetermined strength range to determine whether the ball bearing represents acceptable composition and process parameter variations.
One drawback associated with such testing is that ball bearings are often designed to have a relatively high stiffness. For example, ceramic ball bearings may have a higher stiffness than the stiffness of the load testing machine used to test the ball bearings. As a result, the measurements of the load testing machine may be inaccurate and thereby negatively influence reliability of ball bearing quality testing.
Accordingly, there is a need for an assembly and method for testing ball bearings that provides accurate measurement of ball bearing fracture characteristics while avoiding the problems associated with the stiffness of the load testing machine.